With the resurgence of the so-called "bouncing ball" and matrix pin printers in typewriters and serial printers for computers the penchant has been given to the use of a cartridge to contain the ribbon.
Various cartridges have been designed. Cartridges which do not hold a continuous ribbon have become quite bulky in order to have an adequate supply of ribbon for the printing operation because it is not desirable to replace the ribbons frequently. The response to this problem has been to develop cartridges which have a continuous reusable inked ribbon. These cartridges typically have an adequate supply of film or cloth ribbon stuffed in a storage bin. The cartridges are designed usually to have an aperture in the center of a cartridge and the ribbon is drawn across the aperture at the print position. The ribbon is guided by the shape of the cartridge to and from this position where the printer is to be effective.
Stuffing these cartridges has been a problem which has been difficult to solve. The prior art method known to be actually used utilized manual threading of the cartridge and a pneumatic stuffer to blow the ribbon into the cartridge. This has several disadvantages in that the amount of ribbon was not uniformly measured and the number of units which could be processed depended upon the skill of the operator to a great degree.